HOLLYWOOD -- Rob Kerkovich ("The Rebound," "Happy Endings") has been added to the cast of "NCIS: New Orleans," the New Orleans-set spinoff scheduled to premiere in September. The show's producers also announced at the Summer TV Tour that crossover episodes are already being planned in which characters from "NCIS," TV's No. 1 drama and the new show's time slot lead-in, will appear in the spinoff.

Kerkovich will play a morgue assistant, said Gary Glasberg, executive producer of both "NCIS" and "NCIS: New Orleans." Kerkovich will work beside CCH Pounder, who plays a Jefferson Parish medical examiner on the show. The other main cast is Scott Bakula, Lucas Black and Zoe McLellan. Filming on the series, introduced during two episodes of "NCIS" earlier this year, begins in New Orleans next week.

"If you think of the world of 'NCIS,' the regular one, there are a lot of branches there. We just have the three (main characters), and CCH's character. The office itself will still just be the three of them. We needed to start to add people on periphery. "

The character, named Sebastian Lund, is not a New Orleans native in the story, Lieber said.

"But he's taking it all in the same way the others are, taking on the city as an adopted friend.

Rob Kerkovich in 'The Rebound.'

"(Kerkovich) is mostly out of comedy, and he's facile on his feet, and he's a standup, so he's got all this energy. We had a long set of auditions that went on, and he came up four or five times and was fantastic."

Glasberg also announced possible crossovers in which characters from "NCIS" appear in the spinoff, mentioning Jethro Gibbs (played by Mark Harmon, also an executive producer of the new series), Anthony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly), Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) and Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard (David McCallum).

"That's the fun of what we have here, is having that interaction," Glasberg said. "As to how often and when it happens, there's a lot that goes into the planning of that."

The crossover scenes won't necessarily be filmed in New Orleans, Lieber said. "NCIS" is produced in Valencia, Calif., and scenes with that show's regulars could be filmed there for later splicing into "NCIS: New Orleans," as some scenes for the preview episodes were composed.

"There are already in the first four scripts crossovers with characters in the original 'NCIS,'" Lieber said. "No guarantees yet who will come down there, but there will be interlocking elements."